Casting on the long-gestating adaptation of Orson Scott Card‘s sci-fi YA novel Ender’s Game has been falling into place over the past month, with Asa Butterfield (Hugo) signed on for the lead role and Hailee Steinfeld and Ben Kingsleyin talks to join as well. Now Canadian teen star Brendan Meyer has boarded the project in the role of Stilson, a classmate who bullies Ender. Meyer is best known for his lead role in the Canadian series Mr. Young, which follows a child prodigy who graduates college at 14 and returns to his high school as a science teacher.

Gavin Hood will direct the film from his own script, about a gifted boy who is drafted into a special military program that trains children to fight against an alien species called the Formics. Ender’s Game will begin shooting early next year for a March 2013 release. [The Hollywood Reporter]

After the jump, Tom Wilkinson gets some help in Disney’s The Lone Ranger.